The true test of talent for a
fiction writer is the ability to imagine pain, angst, despair, discouragement,
frustration as well as joy, ecstasy, elation and pleasure. This is the power
that runs the machine of character creation that lies at the very heart of
storytelling.
As we fiction practitioners
understand, craft can be learned, but without the innate power of the
imagination the characters that power stories become merely stick figures in a
charade bereft of emotional content, a pallid portrayal of clichés that offer
the reader no window into the search for truth that is the bedrock motivation
of the serious fiction writer.
But the imagination is no
passive instrument, it has to be fed with the imagery of intense observation
and experience, alerting all the senses of the creative writer who absorbs them
deeply and understands their signals and meaning. What goes on in the furnace
of the mind is mysterious and miraculous, often impossible to define despite
being what I have characterized as the essential ingredient.
It might seem like a bit of
a stretch to relate these thoughts to the intense activity of our current
national election but the fact is that fiction writers are deluged with
information and experience that offers a lot more than statistics, sound bites and
a veritable flood of anger and insult.
For a serious fiction writer
the imagination is deeply challenged to discover the real truth of what seems
like a never-ending tornado of words without meaning, like breadcrumbs flung into
a swamp to feed a starving multitude of hapless creatures fighting for
survival.
Writers must try to understand
the pain of those who built things in the old America; our cars, our roads, our
steel, who cut our timber, who poured our concrete, laid our pipes, strung our
wires, grew our food, constructed our homes, those who built, sacrificed and fought
for an America that answered our needs for economic comfort, safety and the
ability to enter the aspirational challenge of “getting ahead.”
A writer must understand the
pain felt as well by the deprived and the discriminated who have come up
against the wall of hatred and blind unfeeling bias on the basis of skin color,
religion, gender, sexual orientation, mental and physical handicaps, and the
myriad variations in appearance and intellect that make up the extraordinary
diversity of humanity.
For the creative writer of
noble aspiration he or she must cast themselves within the psyche of their characters
and summon up their motivation, fully understanding the conflict that must be
dealt with as the story moves on with its mission of completion.
What the fiction writer understands
is that the human animal struggles to attain the joyous sensation of optimism
and can easily fall prey to pleas of comfort and assurance in the face of the
mysterious void that awaits them and for which many have devised ways to find
hope in what is commonly referred to as the “afterlife.”
The current election in this
age of technology offers us a menu of acute and all encompassing naked
revelation of the problems that afflict humanity in its attempt to create
rational boundaries to protect and allow it to survive, prosper and live in comparative
safety and, as our wise founders once wrote, attempt “the pursuit of happiness,” a worthy
aspiration of infinite definitions that will always engage the serious fiction
writer.
If out of this election year
experience a novel emerges by some creative writer banging the keyboard in their
parents’ basement, I do not think, despite all the “sturm und drang,” despite
the avalanche of empty and often angry words, despite the comedy, posturing and
torrent of accusations, despite the costuming, staging and endless analysis by
witless journalists and tiresome pundits, despite the infinite polling and intellectual
autopsies by self-proclaimed experts and faux historians, whatever the outcome,
the great novel it will inspire will be rich in irony, humor, character
development, conflict, insight and
wisdom and not, as the pessimists in our midst might predict, in desolation and
doom. That novel will offer one of the most telling learning experiences in the
history of our times.
TWEETABLE
And we know it will come! Thanks for your insight!
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